The New Division Will Drive Revenue Growth by Leveraging Dolphin’s Vast Expertise in Cultural Impact to Break Through the Sources and Citations LLMs Study Most
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESS Newswire / December 16, 2025 / Dolphin (NASDAQ:DLPN) a leading entertainment marketing and premium content production company, today announced the creation of Dolphin Intelligence, a new division focused entirely on offering innovative opportunities for brands, talent, creators and companies to gain advantage as the new AI marketing environment ushers in a golden age for earned media.
Built on Dolphin’s decades of experience in human-centered cultural spaces including film, television, music, lifestyle, food, sport and purpose-driven initiatives, Dolphin Intelligence is designed to ensure its partners show up where it increasingly matters most: inside the conversations, citations and recommendations generated by AI engines and large language models ("LLMs").
Dolphin Intelligence will be led by creative industry veteran Mark Anderson, who has spent nearly thirty years on the frontiers of technology and creativity, from Silicon Valley to Madison Avenue. As an award-winning creative with roles at industry-leading agencies including Razorfish and BBDO, Mark has extensive experience incorporating emerging technologies into pioneering and revenue-driving creative expressions.
"This is a transformative opportunity for all of our clients," said Mark Anderson, Director of Creative Intelligence at Dolphin. "Contrary to the fear that AI will replace human creativity, we’re already seeing the opposite: AI is amplifying the creative moments and authentic experiences that are at the core of what we do. In a way, it has taken AI to remind us what it really means to be human – and that emotional connection is more important to marketing than ever."
GEO, AI and the Renewed Impact of Earned Media
At the heart of Dolphin Intelligence is the core insight that AI has ushered in a new golden age of earned media. Most generative engines and LLMs are trained primarily on editorial, reference and user-generated content, instead of traditional ad units, which means that brands with rich, credible earned footprints and objective voices are more likely to be surfaced, cited and recommended.
However, succeeding in Generative Engine Optimization ("GEO") and AI Engine Optimization ("AEO") requires brands to behave differently:
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They must show up, in the real world, across multiple sectors of culture, from news and entertainment to food, sport, philanthropy, hospitality and thought leadership, so LLMs encounter consistent, reinforcing signals about who they are and what they stand for.
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They must think of paid media primarily as a way to fund memorable cultural moments, brand interactions, partnerships and content that earn coverage and conversation, which in turn feed the datasets AI models learn from.
"We want CMOs to understand that the brands AI ‘trust’ most are the ones that are validated by authentic human voices and real-life experience," added Anderson. "That means supplementing traditional media plans and using even a small percentage of paid budgets to create high-impact, highly-earnable ideas that LLMs will repeatedly encounter and cite over time."
Positioning Dolphin for New Revenue Growth in the AI Era
Dolphin Intelligence is expected to create new revenue streams for the Company through a suite of AI-focused strategic services, recurring advisory engagements and data-informed products that can be layered onto existing client relationships and sold to new categories of businesses.
These offerings are designed to:
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Expand share of wallet with current clients by adding AI, GEO and AEO strategy to existing publicity, social, influencer and creative scopes;
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Attract new clients specifically seeking help navigating the impact of AI, generative search and LLMs on their marketing mix; and
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Create scalable IP in the form of frameworks, methodologies and tools that can be licensed or standardized across categories.
"Every major platform shift has rewarded the companies that moved first," said Bill O’Dowd, CEO of Dolphin Entertainment. "We believe AI and LLMs will reshape how every marketing dollar is spent. Dolphin Intelligence gives us a new suite of services that not only helps our clients adapt and grow, but also positions Dolphin for incremental, long-term revenue as brands reallocate budgets to win in this environment."
New Services Built to Have Creativity Rewarded by AI Search
The intersection of creativity and AI will sit at the heart of Dolphin Intelligence’s offerings, which will focus on optimizing a brand’s profile, discoverability and relevance for generative engines and LLMs, while unlocking new fee and project opportunities for Dolphin.
New services and products will include, among others:
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Cite Bites™ – Earned media plans and brand activations that are "back-engineered" to target and influence the sources and citations most frequently referenced by LLMs and generative search experiences, helping brands become more visible inside AI-generated answers.
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Emotional Mapping™ – Strategic refinement of brand communications, messaging and content formats to better align with the conversational, casual and question-driven ways people are interacting with AI tools – from chat interfaces to voice assistants.
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Authenticity Scoring – Analysis and tracking of a brand’s use of media, content and language to ensure optimization for the objective, authoritative, and authentic measurements preferred by LLMs.
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AI GEO & AEO Strategy – Proprietary frameworks and playbooks that help brands rethink their mix of earned and paid, ensuring that a portion of traditional paid budgets is devoted to creating ownable, culture-shaping moments, partnerships and content that are more likely to be referenced by AI systems.
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AI Readiness & Narrative Audits – Subscription-like or project-based engagements that assess how a brand currently appears in AI-generated results, identify category whitespace, and map out the narrative and content needed to improve its AI presence over time.
These services are being designed to complement, not replace, Dolphin’s existing strengths across publicity, influencer marketing, social strategy and original content, giving clients a single partner that can connect traditional culture-shaping tactics with next-generation AI distribution, while creating new billable opportunities for the Company. With full event, activation and content production capabilities, Dolphin is unique in its ability to design and implement every step of the strategic and creative process, ensuring the most effective and AI-optimized results.
Partnership With OtterlyAI to Power Measurement and Insights
To help lead the moment-by-moment analytics, monitoring and continuous optimization that are critical to these offerings, Dolphin Intelligence has partnered with OtterlyAI, a pioneer in the emerging AEO category.
OtterlyAI’s technology will help Dolphin Intelligence:
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Track how and where brands appear inside AI-generated results;
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Monitor which sources and citations are most influential for a given category;
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Measure the impact of specific campaigns on AI visibility over time; and
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Inform iterative adjustments to content, messaging, prompts and media strategy.
The combination of Dolphin’s cultural expertise and OtterlyAI’s measurement capabilities is intended to give clients a clear path to becoming "first choice" brands for both consumers and the AI systems that increasingly guide their decisions – while providing Dolphin with a measurable, performance-oriented story for investors and clients alike.
ABOUT DOLPHIN
Dolphin (NASDAQ:DLPN) is where cultural creation meets marketing execution. Founded in 1996 by Bill O’Dowd, Dolphin operates as both a venture studio-developing and investing in breakthrough content, products, and experiences-and a marketing consortium, featuring leading agencies across every communications discipline.
At its core, the venture studio creates, produces, finances, markets, and promotes new businesses and cultural ideas – ranging from acclaimed film, television, and digital content to consumer goods, live events and partnerships that define entertainment and lifestyle. Surrounding this entrepreneurial engine, Dolphin’s marketing prowess brings together best-in-class firms including 42West, The Door, Shore Fire Media, Elle Communications, Special Projects, and The Digital Dept. Together, this collective delivers unmatched cross-marketing expertise and relationships across every vertical of pop culture – from film, television, music, influencers, sports, hospitality, and fashion to consumer brands and purpose-driven initiatives. Dolphin marketing has been the recipient of many accolades, including #1 Agency of the Year on the Observer PR Power List in 2025, The PR Net 100, and the PR News Elite 120.
James Carbonara
HAYDEN IR
(646)-755-7412
james@haydenir.com
SOURCE: Dolphin Entertainment
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